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10 Dec 2016 1:02:37pm

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You're worried about the quality of Christian teaching Janice? Worried that Jesus and historic Christianity might be given a raw deal by the well meaning but untrained? Fair enough. I think schools and parents have the ability to monitor standards. But if we're happy with anecdotes, from my experience, it is often very highly trained theologians and pastors grounded in scripture that oversee these kinds of courses.

Atheists who get exercised over these things prove time and again they simply don't know what Christianity is, and/or uncritically accept secularist definitions of 'religion' (see Paul Griffiths in here). It all gets tedious when atheists, decrying the imposition of dogma, argue for, and go to great lengths in the courts, to impose secularist dogmas on parents and schools.

These groups shouldn't be surprised when they're just dismissed as mirror images of the fundamentalists they seem to be locked in mutual annihilation with.

If you have a rebuttal of my take on the origins of our religious liberty I'd be happy to read it. If you could point to legal materials that prove 'freedom from' Christianity has a history in our jurisprudence I'd be happy to look at it.

As it is I'm happy to affirm with all our ancestors that all authority comes from God, that freedom for self government, the government of the household and the polis are either grounded in God and our understanding of him inherited from our brothers and sisters who encountered him, or the ruthless and powerful take away that freedom.

Most Australians if asked would prefer not to put the integrity of the social order in the hands of groups of atheist feeling themselves alienated from our inherited traditions.